We had rats in our attic. Pretty nasty, but not that bad. It’s probably worse in cold climates. You could have mice in your attic for a long time and not know it. The rats you could hear.
I may have seen it that bad, but probably not.
Wife caught a mouse the other week by hand in a mason jar, first one I’ve seen in the house in a couple years. mice are cute looking but they’re gross and breed like crazy so I kill every one i catch
Were you standing on a chair shrieking at the time?
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You could try to improvise your own bucket mouse trap, then just toss what you catch outside.
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I was upstairs and heard her screaming, went down and she had the jar on top of it.
Well for now at least you can shut the valve off below the leak. Then wait for ZZ or micro to see this, they will know what to do.
Now that you say that, you better go turn the valve back the way it was. That valve is downstream from the water feed which is coming from inside the house. It looks like it is in the off position in your photo. Where does that PVC heading into the ground go? Wherever it goes might be pumping water into it right now.
You probably have a valve on the inside of the house right where that pipe goes through the wall, assuming you have a basement or some way to get at it. You can turn that off for now if you have one.
I should stay out of these home improvement threads. I’m terrible at this shit.
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That looks like some lol homeowners piping. Guessing it feeds a sprinkler/irrigation system? Maybe lol landscapers piping.
It’s not all that difficult a fix if you want to try yourself, but will require some basic tools and finding out how to shut off the water to that hose bibb. You ldo need to replace the part that’s leaking.
@Rivaldo is the plumber, but I would guess that’s a sprinkler line, but whatever it is, above the black valve it’s under pressure all the time and you don’t have to be doing anything for it to leak.
It could be a little leak from anything higher than where you see the water. Right at the arrow? Maybe a crack, but it could be from higher and that’s just where you see the drip.
What to do? Replace the broken stuff. I think the plastic to copper piece is just threaded and shouldn’t be too hard to replace, but it might be the wrong thing to do and replacing that section and putting the valve at the transition might be better.
(that’s not all that you’d need. you’d need a reducer too.)
None of this is particularly hard, but with water under pressure you have to do it pretty much perfectly to not leak - so either be willing to try and redo it a couple times or call a plumber.
Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if you have a big leak under ground there, but that would only leak when you have that valve open.
Theoretically I could have this backwards and the supply is from the PVC coming up - but that would be sucky. Is this a detached garage?
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goofy is in California. He doesn’t have a basement. Almost certainly not in a house that age. Probably no shut off to that other than the main water shutoff.
Yeah, you pretty much only see that black valve on pool equipment.
It’s bonkers to not have a real brass shutoff above the PVC there.
Almost never. Super rich people in places with small lots put them in nowadays and really old houses like 1910 and older may have “root cellars” or something, but not full basements.
You have basements in places where it gets below freezing because you need to make your foundation deep anyway (below the frost line) - might as well have a basement.
zz can correct me if I’m wrong, that’s way out of my specialty.
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Correct. Basements are usually the result of having a foundation bear on solid ground that doesn’t have a freeze/thaw cycle which is prone to a lot of seasonal movement.
If you do call a plumber, have him put a good valve in the laundry room so you can isolate that in the future if need be.
Yeah, if it’s in the wall it will be expensive. Next best thing would be a good valve right where it comes out of the wall.
Do you have to shut the water off from inside the house so it doesn’t freeze and burst the pipe at the hose bibs up there in the Arctic?
I put in a frost-proof spigot, but I usually still close the valve in my basement at some point before the worst of the cold weather. When I was brewing a lot, I used the spigot all winter long some years to chill my wort. But I still try to remember to close the inside valve again when I’m done.
Every time I need a plumber for something I try to have them put in new valves where needed and make little improvements like the frost-proof spigot. It’s more cost effective that way.
We wrap our hose bibbs in whale blubber for the winters.
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